News You Can't Use

Each weekday, in the middle of the night, a videotape recorder at
Skowhegan Area Middle School in Maine automatically whirs to life and
records a classroom news show produced by the Cable News Network.
Teachers show the program, CNN Newsroom, to their students later
in the day.

Many mornings in recent weeks, language arts teacher Kathy Evans has
arrived at school wondering what the show would have to say about the
White House sex scandal. Before she plays the tape each day, she asks
her students what news they think the show will open with that day.
"The kids all say Clinton," she says.

Evans has tried to steer her discussion of current events away from
the more salacious aspects of the story and toward such issues as
presidential character, honesty, and due process. "They have understood
from day one that none of these allegations is proven," she says of her
8th graders. "They seem to be very open-minded and not judgmental."

All over the country, educators and parents have worried about how
to talk about the unfolding story with children, who often know more
than we care to admit. This was driven home recently by cartoonist
Garry Trudeau in his "Doonesbury" comic strip: A school had brought in
a "scandal facilitator" to counsel some supposedly confused 3rd
graders. The kids, of course, didn't need any explanation; they already
knew all the lurid details.

"It's the kind of story you just can't avoid dealing with," says
Carvil Day, a history and government teacher at Renton High School in
Washington state. He and others point out that the matter, if dealt
with properly, can offer a "teachable moment" on such issues as
presidential character, the legal system, and the power of the news
media.

While many young people are getting details about the scandal from
their parents and grown-up news sources, others are learning about the
developments right in the classroom, from TV shows like CNN
Newsroom and news magazines tailored for students. Evans, the
teacher at Skowhegan Area Middle School in Maine, believes the
half-hour, commercial-free CNN show has been responsible in its
coverage of the matter. "They've dealt with it honestly," she says,
while not dwelling on it every day.

Meanwhile, the producers of Channel One, a classroom news
show supported by advertising, say they have barely mentioned the
scandal since doing several news spots when the story first broke. "We
have stayed away from the world of rumor and innuendo," says Andy Hill,
president for programming for Channel One, a 12-minute daily
program targeted at high school students.

The many news publications geared toward classroom use also have
handled the story delicately. Approaches have varied depending on the
periodical's target age group.

My Weekly Reader, the venerable news magazine for elementary
school children, has not run anything on the matter and doesn't intend
to. "We chose not to do anything until there is a resolution as to
whether there is truth being told," says Editor in Chief Sandra
Maccarone. Parents, she explains, were emphatic that they did not want
their children to read about the allegations in one of the nine Weekly
Reader publications. Weekly Reader is owned by New York City-based
Primedia Inc., which also owns Channel One.

Editors at Scholastic Corp. heard pretty much the same thing from
elementary school educators and child-development experts, so they have
left the matter out of elementary editions of their news magazines,
too. They did, however, publish advice for teachers and parents on how
to deal with children's questions.

"At the secondary level, our advisers told us differently," says
Ernest Fleishman, Scholastic's senior vice president for education.
"They said our kids need information on presidential scandals." So the
high school magazine Scholastic Update included an article that
discusses Watergate and other White House scandals of the past.

"One of our concerns is that as kids get hammered with scandals,
they may become cynical or apathetic," Fleishman says. "We want to
remind them that public service is still admirable and important."

The most recent entrant in the field of classroom publications is
Time For Kids, a junior version of Time magazine. Time
For Kids Editor Claudia Wallis worried in an essay in the regular
version of Time about her 11-year-old son's questions about oral
sex, a term that has been ubiquitous in the news coverage of the
allegations. While she gave her own child a brief explanation, she
wondered in print how all the allegations should be addressed for the
1.7 million young readers of her magazine.

Because they did not want to be the ones to introduce the topic, the
editors left any discussion of the allegations out of their
primary-grades edition, which goes to 2nd and 3rd grade students. But
in the main edition, which goes to 4th through 6th graders, Time For
Kids ran a short sidebar about the allegations next to a recent
cover story about the president's State of the Union. The story on
"Presidential Problems" briefly discussed the reports that Clinton "had
a young girlfriend named Monica Lewinsky."

"We felt we should do something short, simple, and clear," Wallis
says. "The word 'girlfriend' can sound as innocent or suggestive as a
kid can want it to be. It is a familiar word. There were a lot of words
we didn't use. We didn't use adultery. We did not mention sex."

Michael Berger, a 4th grade teacher at St. John the Baptist School
in Northampton, Pennsylvania, feels lucky that his students at the
Roman Catholic school have not bombarded him with lots of sex-related
questions. "The kids didn't really push it," he says. "One of the
things we did talk about was the fact that these were allegations and
they weren't all necessarily true."

Some teachers have used the story to discuss broader themes about
government and the presidency, as well as to examine the role of the
news media. "It's important for teachers to shift it to the
constitutional issues like due process," says George Cassutto, a social
studies teacher at North Hagerstown High School in Maryland.

Like a number of other educators, Cassutto says many of his students
do not seem concerned about the allegations that Clinton was unfaithful
to his wife. "There is a very liberal view about personal affairs," the
teacher says. "That may be a reflection of the fact their parents are
from the baby-boom generation."

Such laissez-faire attitudes concern some social
conservatives. "Truth-telling, respect for the law, and respect for
marriage—these are important things for young people to learn in
school," says Bob Morrison, an education policy analyst with the Family
Research Council in Washington, D.C. "We definitely think that private
behavior is illustrative of a person's character."

Thomas Lickona, a professor of education at the State University of
New York at Cortland, believes that the scandal provides an excellent
opportunity for teachers to discuss presidential character and moral
leadership with their students. "A class could be engaged in what
qualities are important in a president," says Lickona, author of
Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and
Responsibility. "A president has to set a good example for the rest
of the nation. If he acts in ways that are dishonest and unjust, that
tends to lower the whole moral standard by which people behave."

Another advocate of character education, George Washington
University sociologist Amitai Etzioni, says it's wrong to expect the
president to be "inhuman." In contrast to those calling for the
president to be more forthright in responding to the allegations,
Etzioni says people should empathize with Clinton.

"When you ask a person to be completely honest about the most
intimate part of his life, are you not pushing him into lying?" says
Etzioni, a longtime acquaintance of the president and an organizer of
several Clinton White House conferences on character education. "I
think the American people have shown remarkable self-control" in
judging the president, Etzioni adds. "We're not going to chase him out
after a few weeks of trial in the media. Not rushing to judgment is
very important as an ethical person. Children should understand how
important that is."

—Mark Walsh

Web Only

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.